TODAY'S FAMILY & KIDS ACTIVITIES IN QUEENS-MAR 1

Daily activities for kids and the family are abound in Queens! Whether you want to spend the day with your children at a zoo, a museum, or just outdoors, we've got it all here. Making plans for next weekend for your family? Take a glance at the NY Metro Parents' calendar!

There's a classic Beatles song with lyrics "I get by with a little help from my friends..." In this program, teen volunteers help children in grades K-8 with their school assignments. Space is limited.

Teens can warm up and find out how they would do by taking a practice test that uses the types of questions on the real exam. (Event #146827); Preregistration is required online at www.PrincetonReview.com/Events or by calling 800-273-8439.

Join a cool club in Queens! Powered by National Geographic Kids, this a great opportunity for kids to learn in a fun, interactive setting featuring creative activities and games that focus on discovery through play. Kids receive a membership card, great discounts at participating Queens Center stores and a special gift on your birthday. It's easy to join. Just grab Mom, Dad or a grown up and stop by Guest Services, Level 1, Macys Wing (across from Applebee's), and have them fill out a membership form for you.

Most people know Tamara Tunie for her starring roles in films such as FLIGHT with Denzel Washington, in television series like LAW AND ORDER: SVU, and on Broadway in plays such as JULIUS CEASAR and DREAMGIRLS. Despite her renowned visibility in the entertainment world, what they may NOT know is Ms. Tunie is an accomplished singer. Having studied classically and with a BFA in Musical Theatre from Carnegie Mellon University, she added Jazz several years ago and has performed at the legendary ALLEN ROOM of JAZZ AT LINCOLN CENTER, and FEINSTEIN'S at the REGENCY in New York City, where one critic wrote, "She's a song stylist who's comfortable singing everything from Chuck Mangione's 'Land of Make Believe' to Victor Young and Jack Elliot's 'A Weaver of Dreams'."
There was "Standing Room Only" at the end of the Feinstein's run, despite New York City being debilitated by hurricane Sandy! Ms. Tunie has performed with a plethora of incomparable musicians, such as Mike Renzi, Billy Stritch, and Roger Humphries, to name a few, and has helped raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for Penn State University Allegheny County's Student Scholarship Fund, with her performances at ALL THAT'S JAZZ! She has also performed for the Mabel Mercer Foundation at TOWN HALL and at SYMPHONY SPACE, bringing down the house with music from Billie "Lady Day" Holiday to Cole Porter. Another critic wrote, "Tunie SWINGS, sings great, looks great!" Ms. Tunie continues to star as medical examiner, Dr. Melinda Warner, on the hit drama series "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit".
Her complete list of credits include: Broadway: Julius Caesar (with Denzel Washington), Oh Kay (with Brian Stokes Mitchell), Dreamgirls (20th Anniversary Benefit Concert), Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music. Regional: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Les Liasons Dangereuse, Tartuffe, Antony and Cleopatra, All's Well That Ends Well, Troilus and Cressida (New York Shakespeare Festival, Central Park), Loose Knit. Film: FLIGHT, Devil's Advocate, City Hall, Snake Eyes, Eve's Bayou, The Caveman's Valentine. Television: 24 (Season 1), Law and Order, Sex and The City, NYPD Blue, New York Undercover, Chicago Hope, and Jessica Griffin on As The World Turns. Broadway Producer: Tony-Award, Spring Awakening, Tony-nominated, Radio Golf, MAGIC/BIRD and the "destined for Broadway" FROG KISS: the NEW MUSICAL. Off-Broadway Producer: Dutchman (The Cherry Lane). Directorial Debut: See You in September (available on Amazon.com). You can hear her voice on national commercials, documentaries, radio spots, and PSAs.
Ms. Tunie is Chair Emerita of the Board of Directors of FIGURE SKATING IN HARLEM, a non-profit organization that teaches education and life skills to young girls in the Harlem community through the art and discipline of figure skating. She is President of the Board of Directors of HARLEM STAGE/THE GATEHOUSE and serves on the Board of Directors of GOD'S LOVE WE DELIVER. Ms. Tunie resides in Harlem with her Emmy Award-winning husband, Jazz Vocalist, Gregory Generet.

Join in for the type of artistic activities that everyone loves, but not one likes to clean-up after. Except the LICM staff. The afternoon will offer a variety of sensory activities for children ages 18 months to age 4.

Urban Park Rangers specialize in interpretation of historic turning points, both natural and man-made, in our city's long history. Celebrate the 75th and 50th anniversaries of the 1939 and 1964 New York World�s Fairs. Park history programs tell the story of Queens favorite parks from the past to their future.
Meet at the Unisphere.

One man's trash is another man's treasure! Don't miss this fund-raiser for the Queens Historical Society. Who knows what treasures may be found, a collection of used items will be sold, much akin to a yard sale or garage sale, Participants may just find the treasure they are looking for.

With spring fast approaching, we all need pots for planting. Take an ordinary, terracotta pot and make it into something fantastic by adding beads, tiles, buttons, ribbons, and other odds and ends. Then, add some soil and a seed and don't forget to water! Free, and admission to the grounds is free until 12pm.

As they prepare to graduate from college, the Muppets perform a musical revue they call 'Manhattan Melodies.' The show is a major crowd-pleaser, and several people suggest that Kermit take the show to Broadway. Kermit is at first unsure, but the other Muppets insist on this as well, and they head off to New York City. In "The Muppets Take Manhattan" (rated G), Kermit, Miss Piggy and the gang head to the Big Apple to produce a Broadway musical.

Get a jump on St. Pat's this March at one or both of the St. Patrick's Day parades in Queens. That's right. The Irish need a double dose on the weekend of March 1 and 2 to build up enough steam for the touristy parade in Manhattan on March 17.
The Rockaways hosts the official Queens County St. Patrick's Day Parade (and NYC's second-largest St. Pat's celebration). There will be so many bagpipe bands that they're sure to knock your socks off and maybe your hat. If the sun and the Irish eyes are smiling, expect big crowds. If it's cold and damp, well...you can always take shelter in a pub. Either way, come out to cheer the peninsula! This year more than ever, families can show their support for the Rockaways by coming to the parade!
The Mayor, Senators Charles Schumer, Joe Crowley and other local politicans are expected to attend. Join Grand Marshall The Honorable Donal O'Sullivan, see over 20 marching bands hailing from NYC, Long Island, New Jersey, and upstate, including bagpipe bands. Post parade local rugby clubs Fisheads has a fundraiser at the Old beach club parking lot.

Ahoy, Matte! Climb on board and get ready for a musical adventure. This show revolves around Pirate Pete, a lovable rogue on a mission to find his beloved runaway parrot, Polly (who prefers pancakes to boring old birdseed). Music, mischief, and a boatload of laughs for both children and adults.

Museum of the Moving Image and IndieCade will present Indie Essentials: 25 Must-Play Video Games, an exhibition of 25 playable, independently produced games that represent the breadth and depth of the "indie" video game scene. The games will include cutting-edge titles?most notably the award winners of 2013 IndieCade: International Festival of Independent Games, presented alongside a selection of independent games from the last decade that have had great impact on game design and culture.
Indie Essentials will be on view in the Museum's third-floor changing exhibitions gallery. The 2013 IndieCade award-winning games will be announced at the festival on October 6; a complete list of games in Indie Essentials will be available on the Museum's website by the end of October.
The designers and developers of the games presented in Indie Essentials are individuals or small teams working independently of large studios and publishers. They take daring creative risks to explore new forms and methods of play. Independent games are a fountain of innovation and experimentation, pushing the whole game industry forward as one of today's most dynamic and important cultural forms.
Access to Indie Essentials: 25 Must-Play Video Games is included with Museum admission (and free for Museum members). All games in the exhibition are free play.
Towards the end of the exhibition's run, the second annual IndieCade East will take place at the Museum on February 14 through 16, 2014. This non-competitive East Coast edition offers a lively weekend of games, talks, panels, and workshops celebrating independent games and the people who make and play them. The popular Night Games segment of the festival, with its freewheeling interactive game play for hundreds, will also return. Ticket information and advance purchase options will be announced soon.

"Sirena, The Little Mermaid: It's A Whole New World!" is an original musical marionette puppet show with a surprise ending! After the show, the kids and parents get to rock out on the dance floor. The show runs through March 2.

Join millions of real butterflies on an amazing journey to a remote and secret hideaway. Weighing less than a penny, the monarch butterfly makes one of the longest migrations on Earth. Follow the monarchs' perilous journey to the remote mountain peaks of Mexico in this 3D film. For the first time ever, witness the transformation from caterpillar to butterfly, inside a chrysalis, thanks to advanced MRI and micro CT scans.
The award-winning production team, including Oscar-winner Peter Parks, followed the year-long migration cycle of the monarch butterflies, from Canada, through the United States to remote 10,000-foot-high peaks in the Sierra Madre Mountains of Mexico.
The film has won numerous awards including the 2013 Grand Teton Award in the category of Best Immersive 3D/Large Format at the Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival and awards at the 2013 Giant Screen Industry Awards, including Best Film, Best Cinematography, Best Film for Lifelong Learning, and Best Educational Program.

A mosaic of classic and exotic orchids greets visitors in the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory - a living design inspiration taking its cues from a modernist Key West estate garden. Throughout the exhibition, varied events and activities capture the artistic and cultural appeal of the Keys through live weekend music, a curated poetry walk, Orchid Evenings, and more.
During The Orchid Show: Key West Contemporary, step out of the bustling city and into the Florida Keys, where the dramatic beauty of a flourishing tropical garden is amplified by vibrant architecture to recall this particular island's charm and ambience. The Enid A. Haupt Conservatory's sprawling glasshouse galleries are transformed into a modernist Key West estate garden inspired by a garden originally designed by award-winning landscape architect Raymond Jungles for Susan Henshaw Jones, who is President of the Museum of the City of New York, and Judge Richard K. Eaton. Immerse yourself in an effusion of orchids blooming among still, geometric reflecting pools, soaring angular pergolas, and sleek benches.

This exhibition traces the fascinating history of the Astoria Studio complex, which has been at the heart of filmmaking in New York City since 1920. The studio site was the east-coast home of Paramount Pictures in the silent and early talking-picture eras, a center for independent filmmaking in the 1930s, and the U.S. Army Pictorial Center from World War II into the Cold War era. After falling into disrepair in the early 1970s, the site has become a thriving cultural hub that includes Kaufman Astoria Studios and Museum of the Moving Image.
Using film stills, behind-the-scenes photographs, oral histories, film clips, and posters, the exhibition explores the rich legacy and renaissance of the studio complex. With material from silent-era films featuring Rudolph Valentino, early talking films starring the Marx Brothers, World War II training and propaganda films, such modern classics as The Age of Innocence, and television shows like Sesame Street, The Cosby Show, and Nurse Jackie, the exhibition reveals the significant role that the Astoria studio continues to play in energizing its surrounding community and making moving image history.

Since 1965, when the New York City Landmarks law was instituted, more than 30,000 structures and environments have been protected from destruction through landmark designation. Explore the history of New York through the lens of its landmark buildings in this exhibit of photographs, The show documents architectural structures of all types that reflect the city's history, from the seventeenth through the twentieth centuries.

Artist Alan Richards's colorful satirical composite images, or photomanipulations, feature elements juxtaposed to create pieces that portray humor and whimsy. An opening reception will take place on Sunday, February 16, from 1 to 4pm.

Circles are amazing shapes. If you look around, you�ll see that they�re everywhere: wheels, clocks, doorknobs, tortillas, Frisbees and tops. Be the first to explore an exciting exhibit, celebrating the math, science and beauty behind such a simple shape. Children and adults alike will uncover the secrets of the many circles in the world. The exhibit runs through May 4.
Secrets of Circles offer visitors the chance to:
�Draw circles on a glow-in-the dark table
�Go on a circular scavenger hunt
�Build a gear contraption to turn a dancing doll.
�Climb into a circular boat
�Play and pretend in a market full of circles from around the globe
�Use mirrors to experiment with symmetry
�Learn how circles aid engineers in solving problems.

Reflecting in 1973 on his formative years as an artist, Noguchi remarked "I seem to have lost my facility but I was facile at drawing. I could do anything. It was easy for me." Noguchi's Early Drawings bears out this confidence. Each of the drawings on view reveals a very different facet of his quest to form a unique artistic identity in the years following his apprenticeship with Brancusi. His search for style is brought into sharp focus by being restricted to the subject he returned to most often: the female nude. The selection of drawings on view covers exercises from the life drawing classes he took at Academie Collarosi and L'Acad?mie de la Grande Chaumi?re in Paris in 1927, as well as his distillations of signature strains of Modernism he encountered in Paris and New York, including traces of artists as diverse as Picasso, Tsuguharu Foujita, Elie Nadelman, Matisse, Egon Schiele, and Arstide Maillol.
Throughout this period, Noguchi relied on drawing to keep his eye sharp for the portrait bust commissions by which he made a living, even as he used it as a tool for learning about abstraction. Like the busts, these drawings show his preternatural adaptability to sitter and circumstance. The ability to effortlessley mimic the styles of established artists has cut short as many careers as lack of talent. Facile technique does not at artist make. In these amazing drawings, so diverse and assured they could be the work of fourteen different artists, we see Noguchi at the critical moment when he could have gone either way.

The core exhibition of the Museum, a one-of-a-kind experience that immerses visitors in the creative and technical process of producing, promoting, and presenting films, television shows, and digital entertainment. Occupying 15,000 square feet of the Museum's second and third floors, the exhibition reveals the skills, material resources, and artistic decisions that go into making moving images. Behind the Screen also introduces visitors to the history of the moving image, from nineteenth-century optical toys to the present-day impact of digital tools on film editing and post-production. Children under the age of fourteen must be accompanied by an adult of eighteen years or older.
Artifacts: The exhibition incorporates approximately 1,400 artifacts from the Museum's collection of the material culture of the moving image. These include historic film and television cameras, projectors, television sets, sound recording equipment, costumes, set design sketches and models, make-up, fan magazines, posters, and an outstanding collection of licensed merchandise?dolls, toys, board games, lunch boxes, and more. The Museum has also been a pioneer in collecting video arcade and console games, which are on exhibit and available for play by visitors. Recently acquired objects on view include makeup used on the stars of Sex in the City, a mechanical prop designed by Mike Marino for a climactic scene in Black Swan, and molds and prototypes produced during the creation of a King Kong action figure.
Computer-based interactive experiences: Visitors may record their own movements as a sequence of still photographs that can be printed out and made into a flipbook; create their own stop-motion animations, which they can save and email; record their voices over dialogue from a film, following the same procedure that actors use when dubbing their lines in post-production; choose sound effects to add to the images of well-known movies and television shows; add music to scenes from movies, and to experience how music affects mood and tone.
Audio-visual material: Behind the Screen includes nearly four hours of audio-visual material that ranges from film clips related to the artifacts on display; projections of the earliest kinetoscope films, The Great Train Robbery, and selections from The Jazz Singer and Nanook of the North, all of which bring key moments in film history vividly to life; special videos, including The First Movies about Etienne Jules Marey and Chuck Workman's Precious Images; and a simulation of a live TV control room, taking visitors inside the room where director Bill Webb called the shots for the broadcast of a game between the New York Mets and San Diego Padres.
Commissioned artworks: Artworks created especially for incorporation into Behind the Screen are Tut's Fever by Red Grooms and Lysiane Luong, a real movie theater equipped for video that seats thirty-five; TV Lounge by Jim Isermann, an environment resembling a 1960s living room; and Feral Fount by Gregory Barsamian, a stroboscopic zoetrope using 97 sculptures rotating on an armature to create a short animation.

Located in one of the most diverse neighborhoods in the city, the recently expanded Jackson Heights Greenmarket is the largest and busiest Greenmarket in Queens. Wrapping around the edge of Travers Park, this bustling Sunday market draws a large crowd of families, long-time residents and young couples who come out to shop, enjoy the lively scene, and meet and greet their neighbors. The Friends of Travers Park designated 78th a "playstreet" where they host family-friendly events each Sunday adjacent to the market. Reflecting the culinary diversity of the neighborhood, the Jackson Heights market offers a broad selection of vegetables, fruit, eggs, fish, honey, chicken and specialty Mexican produce.